COMPANIONS IN TRANSFORMATION: THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH’S WORLD MISSION

IN A NEW CENTURY

Mission Vision Statement presented by the Standing Commission on World Mission

to the 2003 General Convention

FOREWORD

It is a great honor to have been asked to write a foreword to Companions in Transformation: The Episcopal Church’s World Mission in a New Century. This important document sets out, in a way that is both visionary and practical, guidelines for the people of the Episcopal Church as they seek to discern appropriate paths for engaging in God’s mission in this still new century and millennium.

It is a great honor – but, may I say, not an entirely unexpected one. I am well

aware of the value that many people in the Episcopal Church place on the close and continuing links between your Church and the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (USPG), the body of which I am General Secretary. You still remember that it was missionaries from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) who, in the early years of the 18th century, were instrumental in establishing the first Anglican congregations in New England, which eventually became the nucleus of the Episcopal Church. Your first bishop, Samuel Seabury, was an SPG missionary, and today you express the mission impulse in your church’s formal name as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. I remember with gratitude the warm friendship with which many of you joined us for our Tercentenary celebrations in 2001 in England. I also enjoyed celebrating with some of you the tercentenaries of several of your earliest churches in 2002. Like you, I cherish our links, and I rejoice that we still have much to give and receive from each other.

As I have read and studied this vision statement, I appreciate especially the

generosity of spirit which pervades it and the willingness to be excited and challenged by new models and means of mission. A number of the images that it uses – such as pilgrim, host, servant, sacrament – have stimulated my colleagues and me in USPG, and many others, to think in new terms about our part in God’s mission. Mission today is indeed multi-directional and multi-faceted. Speaking from my deep roots in the Church in Pakistan, I am grateful for the statement’s recognition that mission today must take place in a world of many faiths. This is one of the most challenging road-maps for mission in our time.

Companions in Transformation — an excellent title. The word “companion”

alludes to the fact that as Christians we are called to be cum pane, to break bread together. Yet this relationship of sharing can never be simply an acceptance of the status

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quo in our world. We need to travel together down a path that will lead to change – both in the personal lives of individuals and in the wider horizons of the world today. As the Roman Catholic theologian Pedro Arrupe reminded us, “Whenever in the world a person is hungry, our Eucharist is incomplete.” We cannot fully break bread in the midst of deprivation and the alienation of others. Our goal must always remain wholeness in a reconciled relationship.

I express our gratitude to the Standing Commission on World Mission and to its

chair, Dean Titus Presler, for their labor of love. I commend Companions in Transformation to you. It will, I believe, help to stimulate your thinking and give all of us a new vision and commitment for world mission.

BISHOP MANO RUMALSHAH General Secretary, USPG Southwark, England, and Peshawar, Pakistan May 2003

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PREFACE O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh, and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

— Book of Common Prayer

Companions in Transformation is offered to the church on the 30th anniversary of

the commission that has authored it. The Standing Commission on World Mission was created by the 1973 General Convention, meeting in Louisville, Kentucky. Its formation was suggested by the Overseas Review Committee, an ad hoc group appointed to carry out the 1969 Special General Convention’s resolve “that a process of re-thinking the overseas mission and ministry of the Church be instituted.”1

The present report fulfills the commission’s charge “to plan and propose policy on overseas mission.” It also represents the kind of mission re-visioning that the 1969 Special Convention called for and which the Overseas Review Committee offered in its report to the 1973 General Convention.

Companions in Transformation both continues themes from that period and charts new directions. The 1973 report celebrated Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence in the Body of Christ, a vision and a slogan that had been offered as a new model for mission by the 1963 Anglican Congress in Toronto and embraced throughout the Anglican Communion. The Overseas Committee grieved how the spirit of MRI, as it was known, was waning and hoped its recommendations would revive it. Likewise, the commission’s report to the 1982 General Convention, Mission in Global Perspective, sought to renew the spirit of MRI.23 Mutual responsibility and interdependence are crucial in Anglican mission, and Companions envisions how they can be implemented. MRI does not appear in the vision statement as a catchphrase, however, because it came to be associated with a now spent programmatic initiative.

A tilt toward decentralized mission in Companions expresses a shift in

perspective since 1973. Thirty years ago the bulk of the Episcopal Church’s world mission was initiated and managed from the Episcopal Church Center. Relationships now develop through the many mission groups that began emerging in 1974 and which now coordinate with one another through networks. Episcopal mission work today is too voluminous and exuberant to be contained by any single structure.

In a similar way, the 2003 vision is less oriented to the international structure of

the Episcopal Church itself. In 1973, the Episcopal Church had 21 international jurisdictions, fruit of the church’s mission initiatives since the 19th century. Concerned to end ecclesiastical colonialism, the Overseas Review Committee envisioned world mission primarily through the trajectories of those districts and dioceses. The course that

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their autonomy might take was a major interest, and over the years 13 of those jurisdictions have formed or joined autonomous Anglican provinces.

We now understand ourselves to be an international church that embraces diverse

cultures and nationalities. The Episcopal Church continues to have eight international jurisdictions and, remarkably, may add to that number. The internal dynamism of jurisdictions outside the USA may or may not move toward autonomy over time, but today the church’s mission work is truly world-wide. Recommendations in the 2003 vision are similarly global. Structural recommendations about autonomy and incorporation, therefore, are contained not in the vision statement but in the commission’s Blue Book report to the 2003 General Convention.

Most important, today we understand that the communion we seek is realized

most authentically and powerfully through the shared pilgrimage of Christians around the world. Interdependence is not achieved primarily through a resource pipeline between churches for delivering an established gospel product. We realize, instead, that our very understanding of who God is and what the gospel is needs the experience and prophecy of our sisters and brothers in other places. Indeed, our sight is seriously impaired unless we experience Christ together with people in other cultures as they celebrate community and struggle for justice and reconciliation. Especially in view of the USA’s power in the world, an isolated Episcopal discipleship is likely to be a deficient discipleship.

From this conviction stems the report’s theme that incarnated companionship — people being with people — must be the heart of mission in the new century. This theme was anticipated in 1973:

The Overseas Review Committee is dedicated to the principle that the interaction of people should remain the primary format of the Christian mission. It does not see our relation with sister Churches as that simply of grant-making, though grants are crucial. Persons should be at the core of every transaction, as witnesses and interpreters of the mutuality in mission.4

The present report renews the call for personal presence and grounds it theologically in the incarnation of God with us, Emmanuel. A focus on incarnated presence is shared by many Anglican companions around the world. Over and over again, Christians in Africa, Asia and Latin America stress the importance of mission companions being there with them, coming close to the suffering, sharing in the celebration, entering into friendship. Our hope and prayer is that through such presence the Episcopal Church will renew its mission with Anglicans and others around the world. The text alone of Companions in Transformation is the official vision statement of the Standing Commission on World Mission, and it is the document to which legislation before the 2003 General Convention refers. In this book, stories, quotations,

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photographs and maps are included with the text to highlight various points, but they are not part of the text. Similar ancillary materials are included at the end of this book.

The Standing Commission on World Mission is deeply grateful to many individuals and groups, both within the Episcopal Church and well beyond it, who offered counsel in the drafting of this vision statement. For their mission companionship we give thanks.

TITUS PRESLER Chair, Standing Commission on World Mission

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INTRODUCTION The Standing Commission on World Mission offers to the people of the Episcopal Church, through the General Convention of 2003, a vision for the church’s world mission in the future. Turmoil and change in the church and on the planet make it imperative that world mission, one of the church’s most extensive engagements with the wider world, be guided by reflection on the past, discernment in the present, and vision for the future. The future we realistically anticipate is the next six triennia, to the year 2020. This point in time is appropriate for such an enterprise for several reasons. • World mission interest and activity have surged anew in our church, following widespread disillusionment with world mission in the mid-20th century. • Major new networks in the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion have emerged, following an earlier diminution of mission investment and structure. • Globalization of communication, culture and economics has developed as a major dynamic in international life. • Church funds are being released as the church’s covenanted commitments decrease to former Episcopal jurisdictions that are now autonomous Anglican provinces. • The events of and following 11 September 2001 have prompted reflection about inter-religious relations and the projection of US presence abroad. • The 20/20 Initiative, which seeks to double Episcopal Sunday church attendance by 2020, is reshaping the church’s expectations of its life and profile in society. These and other developments make it imperative to take stock now and look to the future. For this envisioning, the Commission consulted with many companions in mission: the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission and its member organizations in the areas of sending, hosting, education, funding and networking; the Seminary Consultation on Mission; international mission companions in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania; agencies in other Anglican provinces; ecumenical companions; and missionaries of the church serving through various agencies.

The canons charge the Commission to advise the church on mission policy. We offer this document as a resource for guidance in the mission policy of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and for the many other groups who share in the Episcopal Church’s world mission.

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I. THEOLOGICAL BASIS: GOD IS ON MISSION IN CHRIST Christian mission — the activity of sending and being sent in Christ — is grounded in the missionary nature of the triune God as revealed in scripture. In creation, God reached out to create communities of life. With Israel and throughout history, God has moved to restore people to unity with God, with one another, and with all creation. In Christ, God is still on mission in the world through the Holy Spirit. The church’s call is to join God in that mission.

The central act in God’s mission is God’s self-sending in Jesus Christ, the word made flesh and dwelling among us in love. As God’s mission became incarnate in the person of Jesus, so people and communities are central in the mission in which God invites the church’s participation as the body of Christ. The reign of God that Jesus announced: this we are called to proclaim and enact in mission. The love of God that Jesus expressed in presence, compassion, healing and justice: this we are called to live in mission. The reconciliation that God offers a sinful and broken world in Jesus’ death and resurrection: this is the hope we offer the world in mission.

“As the Father sent me, so I send you,” said the risen Christ to his disciples,

including them and us in the gift of being sent by God. God’s sending the Holy Spirit on Pentecost galvanized the earliest Christian community to proclaim Christ in word and deed, with power and joy. In that anointing by the Spirit, Christians from that day to our own have felt moved to cross the many boundaries among human communities to meet and share the presence and work of Christ with people different from themselves. This impulse has made Christian mission global as well as local from its inception.

Ministering in dimensions of difference, eucharistic communities of the baptized

become different themselves through mission. We discover the gospel afresh and receive our identities back transfigured, closer to the likeness of Christ. This transfiguration occurred as the early community of Jesus discovered God at work beyond its own Jewish boundaries among the Gentiles, a surprising new people of God. It has continued wherever Christians have reached beyond themselves to meet and embrace others across the divides of culture, religion, race and ethnicity.

What are we sent to do? “You shall be my witnesses,” said the risen Jesus.

Story-telling is essential to Christian witness, telling the story of what God has done in human lives in light of the story of what God has done in Christ. In Jesus’ words, “I was hungry and you fed me . . . I was naked and you clothed me,” we hear our call to reach out in deed, offering Christ’s whole ministry of justice and reconciliation in solidarity with a suffering world. As we meet Christ in the neighbor, God’s mission transforms both the world and the community of Jesus as it rediscovers its call to discipleship. As the missionary church witnesses in word and deed, God works through it to reconcile all peoples in Christ and renew the face of the earth.

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II. AN ETHOS FOR MISSION: GOD’S PEOPLE ARE COMPANIONS IN MISSION

In Christ God calls and forms the church to be a missionary people participating by the power of the Holy Spirit in God’s mission in the world. The historic legacies of mission, the nature of the Episcopal Church, and the crises of the world situation highlight particular features of God’s call to us today as Anglicans and Episcopalians. Missionary character is important at all levels in the church: in parishes and dioceses, in individual missionaries and their supporters, in voluntary societies, church-wide agencies and their leaders. Companionship is the central characteristic that God’s missionary people are developing in the Episcopal Church in the 21st century. God is calling our church as a whole to be a companion with other churches in the Anglican Communion and beyond. Dioceses and parishes are living out their call to be companions with dioceses and parishes in other countries. Individual missionaries are ministering as companions in their places of service.

Literally, companions share bread together. Theologically, companions share in Christ the bread of life. Today the missionary and the mission community journey with others and form community in Christ. In such companionship both missionary and supporting community are transfigured as they experience the gospel life of their companion communities. The personal and communal presence of companionship coheres with an Anglican theological emphasis on incarnation as the culmination of God’s presence in the world.

Companionship in mission constitutes a shift from some modes of the colonial

era, when sending churches in the Global North were sometimes confident that they had everything to teach and nothing to learn. Focus on companionship also modifies the partnership principle that has guided inter-Anglican mission relationships since the early 1970s. Mission companions in other parts of the world have felt that partnership, while helpfully moving us away from assumptions of dominance, has emphasized doing at the expense of presence, and getting tasks done rather than growing together. Solidarity with the suffering is a central expression of mission companionship. The mission church may not be able to solve the anguish, violence and injustice suffered by the companion church, but simply being present in the place of fear, loss and isolation expresses the love of Christ.

A shift from partnership to companionship has been endorsed by the Mission

Commission of the Anglican Communion in its 1999 report Anglicans in Mission: A Transforming Journey.5 It accords well with the central theme of accompaniment in the world mission work of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, our closest ecumenical companion.6

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Other characteristics are integral to the ethos of mission we seek to embody. In the 21st century, God is calling Christians and the church to be a mission companion that is a: • Witness — “You are witnesses of these things,” said Jesus to his disciples. Witness in word means sharing the story of what God has done with us in light of the story of what God has done in Christ Jesus. Such witness is a natural and inevitable fruit of life in Christ, and it is the heart of evangelism as a mission imperative. Sharing the story with those who have never heard it is a crucial gift. This is true equally in Alabama, Austria and Azerbaijan, that is, in the public square in our own context, in the former Christendom where the gospel has been heard and widely rejected, and in places where its proclamation may be a new event. Sharing our story with others must be part of a dialogue in which we listen to the stories others share with us, whether from places of little faith or other religious paths. The religious diversity of the 21st century, like that of the early centuries of Christianity, calls us to hold together the multiple tasks of listening, learning, and bearing witness to Christ. • Pilgrim — Episcopal missionaries today see themselves as pilgrims, growing in their knowledge of God through the perspectives of the people to whom they are sent, learning as much as they share, receiving as much as they give. The humility of this orientation and the missionary’s eagerness to learn from companions in another culture and socio-economic context nurtures deep and lasting relationships in mission. The cross-cultural encounter transforms us as we discover Christ afresh through another people’s appropriation of the gospel. Authentic mission pilgrims neither romanticize their contexts nor focus solely on what mission is doing for themselves. Instead, the pilgrim motif opens the door to true mutuality in mission, where, as the Anglican Consultative Council said about partnership, “all are givers and all are receivers.” • Servant — “I came not to be served but to serve,” said Jesus. Servanthood in mission means that we listen to the stated needs of our mission companions, look for signs of God’s work in them, and collaborate with them in discerning how God is guiding the implementation of mission vision. It means that missionaries and the mission church put aside prior images of our companions, pre-conceived analyses of their situations, and ready-made solutions to problems. It means that missionaries seek to meet Christ in all situations, including those that arise when new circumstances supersede their stated job descriptions and postpone their cherished goals. For Episcopalians, authentic servanthood is a crucial counter to the assumptions we develop on the basis of our extraordinary access to the power of information, technology and money. Servanthood is a key mark for our church as a whole, which is sometimes perceived as a domineering church from a superpower nation. • Prophet — Episcopal mission pilgrims today often find their views of political, racial and economic relationships in the world challenged and transformed. Experiences of poverty, suffering and violence alongside experiences of affluence, oppression and security often radicalize the foreigners, whether they are long-term missioners, visiting bishops, or short-term teams. These then prophesy to their sending church, prodding it to

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inquire more deeply into dynamics about which it may have become complacent or resigned. They often offer a similar gift in their mission site as they challenge entrenched powers of oppression. Episcopalians in the 21st century are called to prophesy both to our own church and to the world church, that the Body of Christ may be a mustard seed of God’s Jubilee in the world, working justice for the whole human family. • Ambassador — In addition to witnessing in word and deed as ambassadors of Christ, the missionary and mission community are ambassadors of the sending church. Individuals and teams from ECUSA must be aware always that companions are experiencing the vision, faithfulness and integrity of the Episcopal Church through their conversation, conduct and life. This calls for living out the highest ethical standards in personal honesty, respect for others, financial transparency, and faithfulness in personal and professional relationships. The role of ambassador also entails a commitment to represent fairly the life of the Episcopal Church. • Host — “Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet,” said Abraham to the three strangers who appeared at Mamre. “Let it be to me according to your word,” said Mary to the angel Gabriel. In initiating mission, God is not forcible but invites a response of hospitality. As we receive mission companions from around the world, hospitality must be central in our response. Hospitality means that we listen to what our companions say, offer them opportunities to experience the breadth of our church, and care for their needs for food, lodging, travel and friendship. As we go abroad, we are likewise called to be generous and hospitable with those whom God brings to us. • Sacrament — As the body of Christ, the church is a sacrament of Christ, an outward and visible sign of Christ’s inward and spiritual grace. As members of the body, all Christians participate in the communion of the saints and so are members of the sacramental revelation of God embodied in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. A Christian on mission is a sacramental sign of God’s mission to reconcile all people with one another and with God in Christ. The people and communities the missionary meets are likewise sacramental signs of God’s global presence. This sacramental emphasis on persons helps both missionaries and sending groups to retain an incarnational focus on people, relationships and community, which is where God truly lives and where the most lasting impacts are made. The missionary in any place is a sign of the gospel’s universality, the fact that it transcends cultural, geographical and linguistic boundaries to create local, embodied communities in Christ in all places and times.

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III. THE CONTEXT FOR MISSION: WORLD CRISIS AND MISSION INTEGRITY

1. Mission Integrity and Mission Legacies At the opening of the 21st century, we as a people of the incarnate and missionary God are concerned about mission integrity. Integrity requires a credible consistency between word and deed, proclamation and action, vision and implementation. How can we follow Jesus in mission with both humility and confidence, with initiative and accountability? As a broken people, aware of our weaknesses and failures, how can we proclaim and embody wholeness in a fragmented and violent world? In the 20th century many churches in the Global North painfully came to acknowledge that their missionary endeavors had sometimes been carried out under the banner of colonialism. Allied with movements of national imperialism, and often with the face of racism, the name of Christ was made a stumbling block. It is testimony to the power of this name and the presence of the Holy Spirit that Christian churches now flourish in many places where it was introduced amid violence. With this legacy, we know that the motive, direction and expression of Christian mission must be scrutinized closely. In the conflicts of today’s world we believe that Jesus’ revelation of the Reign of God in mercy and justice is more needed than ever. Likewise, the gospel of repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ is more central than ever. In recent years, the Episcopal Church has renewed its conviction that Christian presence, proclamation and service continue to be imperative, both at home and abroad. Mission, broadly conceived, has increasingly become the measure of true faithfulness for parishes and dioceses. On a church-wide basis, “Engaging in God’s Mission” is the theme for the 2003 General Convention.

Recommitment to the wider world through international mission has been striking since 1975. Mission agencies have multiplied, and the number of missionary vocations has increased. The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society and other mission agencies receive from overseas dioceses many more requests for missionaries than they can fill. Every year, hundreds of Anglican Communion visitors are received by Episcopal parishes and dioceses, and thousands of Episcopalians travel on short-term mission trips. Many Episcopalians have experienced in their own lives the truth that the church uniquely experiences its own faithfulness as it reaches beyond its boundaries. In their re-conversion to the world, missionary parishes and dioceses have asked themselves how they can faithfully be in solidarity with others around the world amid their own implication in legacies of nationalism and racism and in contemporary disparities of money and power. Suspicious of American political might and economic resources, Episcopalians are attending to contemporary structures of power and discerning their church’s participation in them. One of the tasks of doing mission with

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integrity, therefore, is a careful theological assessment of the context in which mission occurs. 2. Mission and the Poor in an Era of Globalization

The term "globalization" is commonly used to refer to the increasingly world-wide and trans-cultural reach of contemporary structures of power. In our post-colonial era of global capitalism, the forces which shape human and non-human life have become stronger and more immediate for more of the world's inhabitants. Economies, cultures, lands, and governments are becoming more interdependent through the organization of the global market. While technology steadily increases the anonymous power of a global elite, this market structure has produced an atrocious disparity between rich and poor. The new Rome is no longer a single geographic nexus of power; it is a market which controls its subjects without a center and without a name. In reaction to this new kind of empire, local identities have regained attraction for many. Around the world we see a resurgence of ethnic chauvinisms and religious fundamentalisms, which are regaining political power in many countries. Globalization’s transformation and intensification of power can, like any form of social organization, be both productive and destructive. Some of the promises of globalization include worldwide recognition of human rights, effective regulations for global problems, and better international communication and mobility. Troubling trends include disempowerment of local communities, loss of languages and cultures, and the determinative power of global capital. In view of the Episcopal Church’s historical links with colonialism and the widening gap between rich and poor, the missionary church needs to study the economic, political and social power structures in which it inevitably participates. Globalization requires the church to envision authentically Christian social practices in the life of the world. Where globalization builds community and promotes sharing of resources, the church may cooperate. Where globalization dehumanizes persons and erodes vital community, the church is called to resist and to insist on Christ’s promise of a more abundant life.

Uppermost in our discernment must be the welfare of those of whom Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” Since globalization at once encourages and masks the unjust use of resources by a stronger few at the expense of the weaker many, the church must humbly proclaim the hard sayings of Jesus to the wealthy. 3. Mission and the Groaning Earth Especially for the poor, the effects of social organization and political decisions are often experienced through the physical environment. As land and ecological processes are increasingly shaped by human projects, the natural environment itself has

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become a medium for the communication of power and so also injustice. More and more, missionaries work in communities that are grappling with environmental justice concerns, including resource accessibility and consumption, land use and tenure, water quality, environmentally-imposed health risks, climate change, and population growth. They are called to proclaim liberation, that the world’s poor may experience the fulfillment of Jesus’ vision, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” In August 2002, the Global Anglican Congress on the Stewardship of Creation called on all Anglicans “to acknowledge that the church’s mission must now take place in the context of a life and death planetary crisis whose impact affects all aspects of the church’s life and mission.” American churches have a particular call to ecological prophecy in light of the fact that the richest 20 % of the world’s people consume 86% of the world's resources. Constituting a large part of the richest, the USA contributes inordinately to the earth’s degradation.

Called to nurture communities of wholeness, the Episcopal Church must attend to the whole environment and to the often diffuse ways in which decisions are made about the earth upon which all life depends. As signs of God's love for the world, missionaries are called to proclaim a care of creation for its own sake that reflects God's love for all that God has made. Indeed, through the body of Christ, all creation participates in the perfecting and reconciling mission of God.

In this light, the dramatic impoverishment of bio-diversity over the past half-century undermines our eucharistic vocation to bless the world as God’s gift. With the extinction of so many species, the church is called to mission practices that fulfill the Psalmist’s exclamation, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” “Engaging in God’s Mission” must be understood as a peace for all creation and a gospel of hope for all creatures. Reconciling the world with God requires replanting, restoring, and renewing the earth. 4. Mission and Christianity in the Multicultural Global South The explosive growth of Christianity during the 20th century, especially in Africa, has confirmed Christianity as a truly global religion. It has also markedly shifted its membership centers from Europe and North America, so that the majority of the world’s 2 billion Christians and 82 million Anglicans are now people of color who live in the Global South. The creative rooting of the Christian gospel in local cultures, often called enculturation, is a primary feature of this global growth. People are experiencing Christ through the idioms of their languages and the concepts of their world views. The result is that worship, community, leadership, and mission are expressed very differently among Anglicans and other Christians in the Two-Thirds World. As Anglicans, we celebrate faithful enculturation as a sign of how incarnation continues to be central in God’s self-revelation in the world. Episcopalians must understand that Christianity is now

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genuinely African, Asian, and Latin American on those continents of the world. Indeed, the well-intentioned insistence that Christianity is still somehow foreign or colonial in those areas constitutes today a neo-colonial condescension that prevents us from accepting those Christians as true companions and peers.

As they have become rooted in their cultures, southern churches have become missionary churches, sending thousands of missionaries to other countries, including those of the Global North. This outreach is fueled not only by increasing numbers, but also by the exuberance of a confident faith. The rise of pentecostalism in Latin America and Africa indicates theological responsiveness to the immediacy of God and the promises of the Bible. Healing, exorcism and prophecy are being reclaimed in both imported and indigenous churches. New churches are formed daily, often independent of denominational auspices and in novel forms. A gospel of hope is being preached with confidence in the Holy Spirit. Vitality and growth in southern Christianity have prompted northern Christians to realize that we have much to discover and learn from the cultural expressions of the gospel in the Two-Thirds World. Thus we have re-conceptualized our activity with southern churches. Mission concepts such as partnership, pilgrimage, and companionship are born of northern missionaries’ encounters in societies that are often more Christian than the missionaries’ home societies. These concepts highlight mutuality in mission and recognize that in mission relationships all are recipients and all are givers of the gifts of God for the people of God. Accompanying these commitments is greater interest in understanding the multi-religious environments of both our own churches and our companion churches. The Global Anglicanism Project, initiated by the Episcopal Church Foundation, is a major effort to help the Anglican Communion understand its own diversity in local ethnic, cultural and religious contexts. A major arena of mutual mission effort in the Global South is the churches' response to AIDS, especially through the Council of Anglican Provinces in Africa (CAPA). In a crisis that continues to destroy individuals and decimate communities, DFMS missionaries have been called to join with local churches in an evangelism of love and the preventive measures of public health. AIDS is also leaving behind millions of orphans, for whom provision and opportunity are necessary for the renewal of fractured families and the stability of already impoverished societies. 4. Mission and the Under-Evangelized

Alongside companionship models of mission, the imperative that the gospel be proclaimed to those who have not heard it is receiving more attention in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. This represents a change from the latter half of the 20th century, when northern churches questioned evangelism as based on unduly negative views of other religions and participating in the cultural imperialism of Euro-American societies. Soul-searching about this history has prompted more nuanced views of the faiths of those who are not Christian and has deepened commitment to the need for

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inter-religious dialogue. The events of and following 11 September 2001 have prompted many Episcopalians to take steps toward greater understanding between Christians and Muslims both globally and within the USA.

At the same time, many Anglicans and Episcopalians are hearing anew Jesus’ commission, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” Christian identity entails witness to the Christ who is friend and savior of all people in all times and places. This awareness has renewed concern for the many people and groups around the world who have not heard the gospel or who have experienced only slight exposure to it, whether close to home or in distant places. People in this category number at least 1.5 billion, out of a global population of 6-plus billion. Such concern has been strengthened by the forthrightly evangelistic perspective of Anglicans in the Global South, who have little hesitation in sharing the gospel with under-evangelized groups in their own regions. The Nazi, Rwandan and other holocausts demonstrate that widespread Christian profession does not guarantee gospel practice and, indeed, may become terribly distorted. Yet violent distortions actually underscore the importance of continually proclaiming the power of Christ to transfigure the human story.

Prominence of the partnership model of mission relationships since 1970

contributed to hesitation about outreach to the least evangelized. As envisioned by the Anglican Consultative Council, partnership stresses the importance of missionaries serving at the invitation of host bishops where there is an Anglican judicatory, a principle affirmed throughout the Episcopal Church and by the member organizations of the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission (EPGM).

Mission guided only by the partnership model, however, excludes attention to

peoples living outside Anglican jurisdictions, who are often groups who have received little or no exposure to the gospel. Concern for mission with such groups is included as one of the four covenants of EPGM. Voluntary mission societies, such as Anglican Frontier Missions, have come forward to carry out such mission, often in partnership with Anglican judicatories that share borders with under-evangelized areas.

The church as a whole needs to incorporate concern for the under-evangelized more

integrally in mission strategy and missionary deployment through the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. The church’s 20/20 Initiative within the USA reminds us that under-evangelized people, such as many young adults, are close at hand. Similarly, evangelism is an urgent need in parts of Europe that were in the old Christendom and are now quite secular in their orientation. Sharing the good news is a perennial need, both internationally and at home, both with those who have never heard the gospel and with those for whom it is news grown old and cold.

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5. Mission in the Conflicts of Religions and Peoples

Far from heralding an era of peace, the turn of the century has been marked by intensified violence in many sectors of human life throughout the world. Violence against women is a continuing disgrace. The global community is newly aware of violence against children, especially domestic abuse, coercion into prostitution, execution of street children, and recruiting of children into wars. Ethnic hatreds and regional wars continue to flare in the aftermath of the Cold War. The events of and following 11 September 2001 cast a spotlight on inter-religious relations in these conflicts, especially between Islam and Christianity. The role of the United States is ambiguous: force for peace, yet advocate for war; adversary of terrorism, yet evoker of fear; pillar of global institutions, yet aggressive unilateralist; donor nation, yet coercive marketer. In this environment, American Christians must witness for peace and justice in the world.

The way of peace for Christians is often the via dolorosa, the suffering way of

Christ. Religious persecution and religiously-sanctioned political violence threaten many of the world's people, as well as respectful relations among religions. Christian sisters and brothers in such places as Sudan, northern Nigeria, Pakistan and northeast India fear that their lives may be in danger on account of their faith. In many places the church must decide almost daily about how to respond. Working alongside the suffering, missionaries in places of risk must gather the broader church into solidarity with the oppressed.

Inquiry, exploration and dialogue are crucial in conflicts among religious groups. Even as Christian missionaries witness in word and deed to the saving love of God in Christ, it is missionaries who are called to catalyze the encounters that that can lead individuals and groups from animosity to appreciative listening. As cross-cultural encounters enhance our faith, so also inter-religious encounters cannot help but deepen the spirituality and theological understanding of missionaries and Christians everywhere. “We cannot point to any other way of salvation than Jesus Christ,” said the World Council of Churches in 1990, “at the same time we cannot set limits to the saving power of God.”7 Undertaking common mission is central in inter-religious understanding. Rather than competing, religions must stand together in solidarity with all who are suffering and witness to the dignity of every human being. In these ways, missionary presence becomes a courageous mode of peace-making in a violent world.

As God calls us to mission in an alienated world, God also calls us to faithfulness in our own church conflicts. Controversies within the Communion and our own church have highlighted the internal diversity of the Anglican fellowship and the fragility and preciousness of our unity. Missionaries, who have a special call to engage with difference, may be able to re-call divided Anglicans into community through common mission, confident that in mutual proclamation and shared service the significance of our differences will become more clear. The Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission has nourished Episcopal mission communities in a commitment to support one another in the midst of theological diversities, confident that reconciliation through Christ overcomes secondary forms of alienation from each other.

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6. Summary

God is reconciling the world to God in Christ Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God invites us to participate in this mission as individuals and as communities of the baptized. Marks of integrity in our mission work are reconciliation, wholeness and justice, all completed by love. Made possible in Christ, reconciliation is a Spirit-breathed friendship with God and one another that heals and makes us whole. This wholeness must include justice, which seeks for each creature its distinct participation in the community of God.

Said the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops in September 2001: “We are called

to self-examination and repentance: the willingness to change direction, to open our hearts and give room to God’s compassion as it seeks to bind up, to heal, and to make all things new and whole.”8

Mission with integrity will embody a movement of love through reconciliation to

justice and wholeness. Seeking this love and anticipating the rich fellowship promised as the Kingdom of God, we are called here and now to address the particular fractures of our world.

For the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, world mission with integrity

must include: • Commitment to global mission that is incarnated in personal presence; • Generous offering of the Episcopal Church’s material and spiritual gifts; and • Embrace of a vibrant, Spirit-filled church and a vibrant, diverse communion. From this stance, DFMS will live out mission integrity as it addresses:

• Poverty and the evil powers which perpetuate its suffering; • Environmental degradation and its oppression of humans; • AIDS and its devastating personal and communal effects; • Evangelization needs among peoples with little gospel exposure; and • Violence of all kinds, especially against religious minorities, women and children.

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IV. MODES OF MISSION: INCARNATE PRESENCE IN A WORLD COMMUNITY

Today, Episcopalians engage world mission through increasingly diverse means. Among these, education, sending, hosting, short-term pilgrimage, ecumenical and inter-faith collaboration, diocesan companionship, granting, and networks are major modes needing reflection and support. The presence and work of persons, both as individuals and in groups, are central in these modes. This reflects our Anglican conviction that God’s mission is fulfilled primarily through incarnational presence, through people being with one another and building communities of shared and reconciled life together. 1. Mission Education to Equip the Church Mission education needs to keep pace with the striking resurgence of mission activity since 1975. The Episcopal Church’s extensive and centrally organized world mission in the first half of the 20th century was supported by extensive education in church periodicals and Sunday schools, but such education declined as mission activity declined. Today, despite re-energized mission work from throughout the church, many Episcopalians express surprise that there are Anglicans throughout the world, that our church sends missionaries, and that mission agencies have multiplied. Ironically, while many Episcopalians have global experience through business and educational connections, many remain parochial in their Christian awareness and experience. Responsible engagement with the wider world needs the foundation that only a strong educational initiative can provide. Episcopalians need to grow in our knowledge of the biblical and theological bases for world mission; the history of world mission, both Anglican and ecumenical and in both its strengths and its weaknesses; cultural, economic and political dynamics of the contemporary world that bear on world mission; the many religions of the world and their bearing on mission; Anglican and ecumenical currents in mission thought and strategy; and the practical ways in which parishes and dioceses can engage in world mission. Education takes many forms. The program accompanying the Church School Missionary Offering needs wider dissemination for use by children. Curricula for children and youth need to be developed and existing materials broadened to include mission perspectives. Episcopal and ecumenical resources exist for adult education, but they need to be drawn into a curriculum plan that can be offered to our congregations. World Mission Sunday, instituted in 1997, is increasingly a focal point of world mission awareness, and we encourage its further development. Personal experience offers the most compelling mission education. Visits to congregations by missionaries and international church leaders uniquely intensify local awareness and commitment. We encourage mission agencies, dioceses and seminaries to expand the offering of such visitors. Mission pilgrimages by groups transform awareness in major ways, and we encourage their continuing growth. Cross-cultural experience in

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seminary is crucial in the formation of clergy leaders who will be prepared to engage the wider world in mission.

The Commission proposes that mission-enhanced curriculum materials be developed to transform the awareness of Episcopalians of all ages about world mission. We propose that the cross-cultural internships sponsored by the Seminary Consultation on Mission be expanded significantly through General Convention support. 2. Missionary Sending to Offer Companionship

Missionaries — persons sent to witness to Christ in word and deed — have been crucial participants in God’s mission throughout Christian history. Missionaries received into other cultures, ethnicities and nationalities have proclaimed the gospel, nurtured converts, founded churches, worked for justice, and cared for the physical and social needs of people. In the modern period, missionary presence and work helped establish what we know today as the churches of the Anglican Communion and a host of educational and medical institutions.

The Episcopal Church today has an opportunity to provide channels of service for

growing numbers of people offering themselves for mission from parishes and dioceses that have re-engaged with the wider world. This follows a withdrawal from overseas mission activity in the 1960s and ‘70s, when many questioned global mission’s theological bases and historic relationship with colonialism. The last two decades have seen a spontaneous and exponential growth in mission-receiving, short-term missions and long-term missionaries as dioceses in ECUSA and throughout the world embrace the spiritual formation that grows from cross-cultural encounters. For instance, the 2000 General Convention’s establishment of the Young Adult Service Corps for persons age 18-30 prompted an immediate stream of volunteers eager to serve internationally as Anglican Christians.

Today’s Episcopal missionary goes as companion, witness, pilgrim, servant,

prophet, ambassador, host and sacrament. With such experience of missionaries from the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS) and the voluntary societies, leaders in churches around the world continue to request mission personnel with particular gifts and skills to work under indigenous leaders. Many requests are in traditionally common areas of teaching and training, pastoral care and church development, evangelism and church-planting, medical care and technical assistance.

We affirm our international companions’ growing emphasis on mission personnel

who can assist them with the poverty crisis, the AIDS crisis, the environmental crisis, the under-evangelized, and theological education. In addressing these needs, it is important that missionaries avoid importing assumptions and systems common in development models that assume that western patterns are blueprints for other societies. They should focus, instead, on listening to people’s visions and participating with them in birthing indigenous approaches to local challenges.

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Christian presence across boundaries of all sorts offers witness and renewal that is

essential to the spiritual vitality of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Such presence helps fulfill God’s call that the whole church be involved in sharing the whole gospel with the whole world.

The Commission proposes that missionary exchanges be a major DFMS priority.

This includes several objectives that need financial support beyond present levels: • increase the overall numbers of missionaries; • increase the proportion of missionaries we receive from other parts of the world; • increase the proportion of young adults among our missionaries; • increase the proportion of racial and ethnic minorities among our missionaries; and • increase the number of missionaries from other parts of the world whom we support to work in yet other parts of the world, as in so-called South-to-South appointments.

3. Missionary Hosting to Offer Transfiguration

The growing vitality of Christian communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America calls Episcopalians to be more exposed to the witness of Christian leaders from abroad. Many dioceses and parishes within ECUSA host missionaries from other parts of the Anglican Communion and from across significant borders within ECUSA. ECUSA receives visitors, teachers, evangelists, development workers, preachers, and others doing a variety of work for the churches here or in their home countries. Many of these visitors come for short periods of time upon the invitation of a companion body, and come to represent in person an ecclesial relationship. Some stay longer to work in our church as clergy or lay ministers, and may function as missionaries from their home province. As witnesses to the stories these missionaries bring, Episcopalians at once testify to the faith of others and give account of our own story as church. In this way receiving missionaries from abroad can offer both shared accountability to a common faith and authentic fellowship among differences. Evangelism, spiritual renewal and community building are areas in which many Episcopalians rightly believe that Christians in other parts of the world have much to offer and teach us. “We need them to send missionaries to us!” many exclaim.

Hosting missionaries requires the virtues of hospitality, especially the willingness to receive the gifts of others and to hear the voice of a stranger in our midst. This we do by offering gifts of welcome, which includes openness to the possibility that God would have us hear the word anew. Just as our own missionaries going across borders count on their host community for orientation and support, so we ought to provide those we receive with social orientation and patient supporters.

Hosting also means accepting into our midst those who are “accidental missionaries”, such as the Sudanese refugees who have blessed the American church in their forced relocation here, or the students who come to study here. Sometimes a

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missionary is commissioned in the grace of her arrival here more than in her departure from a homeland. Still, wherever possible, missionary presence should highlight eucharistic fellowship in the Anglican Communion. Thus, while our church is open to unexpected gifts, it is best for visitors to arrive at the invitation of a host diocese and with the blessing of their sending diocese.

The Commission proposes that missionary-hosting receive institutional and financial support on our church’s part for it to become a reality. This is needed because economic disparity prevents many overseas dioceses from sending and supporting missionaries in the Global North. Support must include: • consideration of strategic needs in which foreign missioners can be helpful; • intentional dialogue with sending churches so that their sending and our receiving can be as mutual as possible; • development of a hospitable infrastructure in potential places of ministry; and • commitment of resources by General Convention sufficient to support missioners.

4. Short-Term Mission to Nourish Pilgrimage Each year thousands of Episcopalians journey beyond borders of difference seeking to discover their faith in a new light and experience the church in a new key. Many several-week visits to churches, communities or programs outside the USA join cross-cultural exploration with a desire to serve among the poor. Recognizing the vitality that missioners have brought back to their home communities, more parishes and dioceses are encouraging short-term missions as a mode of spiritual formation. The Commission celebrates these missions and encourages more parishes to develop their congregational life through short-term missions. Such missions are best understood and organized as pilgrimages: journeys of commitment and self-examination undertaken in a spirit of humility and marked by acts of service. Hoping to meet God in a new way, the pilgrim goes out in order that she may return home with a clearer sense of her own identity in God and her vocation in the church's mission. Framing short-term missions as pilgrimages highlights the fact that most travel to established and living communities of Christ and are hosted by those already blessed by the Spirit, usually within the Anglican Communion. When this is the case, they should always occur at the invitation of the host diocese. They should be oriented toward shared fellowship that will continue over time, and a return invitation should be offered. A pilgrimage emphasis acknowledges that the service offered by short-term missioners is often motivated by the spiritual formation and vocational discernment of their participants. Short-term missions are best, therefore, when they are not presented as unilateral donations or rescue operations, but rather celebrate an exchange of gifts with their hosts and a mutual participation in Christ. Lest pilgrimage become the privilege of the affluent, pilgrims must consider how to respond to the fact that often the host community may not have the financial means to organize a pilgrimage in return.

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Undertaking a pilgrimage requires spiritual maturity and personal commitment. Accordingly, parishes and dioceses should require short-term mission to undertake a year of prayer and preparation, offered in companionship with the host diocese, which must be invited to help design the visit. The most fruitful pilgrimages offer a retreat upon return, during which pilgrims reflect on the journey’s significance for their own life and for their parish and diocese, and upon completion commission their participants to renewed activity in the mission of God When pilgrims visit communities in which resident missionaries are living and working, they should seek them out as guides and mutual witnesses. Long-term missionaries should be trained to host pilgrims, and should help shape the short-term missions their host diocese receives as authentic pilgrimages. The Commission calls on dioceses to provide resources for the preparation and meaningful return of pilgrims. We further recommend that there be a staff person within the Anglican and Global Relations Cluster at the Episcopal Church Center who is fully devoted to helping parishes and dioceses – both here and abroad – train, send and receive short-term missions. Such a staff person would be deployed in one of the church’s internal provinces. 5. Ecumenical and Inter-Faith Cooperation to Unify the Witness

Created in the image of the triune God, humans are by nature communal. As we

worship God, proclaim the gospel, and promote justice, peace and love, we do so in community. As we are one body with many parts, we are one community with many gifts to be shared. Authentic witness respects other communities, whether in conflict or harmony, and recognizes the gifts they bring. Dialogue and collaboration with other churches and with other faiths is a powerful witness in itself. For too long, Christian missions were denominational missions that failed to collaborate with each other. Missionaries were sometimes more effective in demonstrating the disunity of Christianity than the universal message of Christ.

All Episcopal mission activity must seek to work with our ecumenical companions, other faiths and the broader community. We must seek dialogue, at the very least, and, where possible, collaboration in ministry. Our doors should open inward to all who wish to enter, and should open outward so that those within can go out to share truly in ministry with others. The nature of our collaboration will vary considerably, but it should be based on the Lund Principle that we should not do things alone that can be done with others. With close ecumenical companions this may mean shared eucharistic feasts and joint formation programs. With other churches and with other faiths and secular groups, it might mean cooperation in reaching out to the sick, the homeless, and victims of violence.

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With ecumenical and interfaith groups, initiatives to encourage contact and dialogue are imperative for reconciliation amid today’s heightened tensions among religions, especially between Islam and Christianity. With all, God is calling us to join hands and speak out when religious freedom is curtailed and when the social, environmental, economic, or political welfare of communities is damaged. It is not necessary to hold identical doctrines or practice identical liturgies in order to collaborate in the mission of Christ. Shared witness in action joins our prayer with Christ’s prayer that all may be one. It allows different voices to be heard. It encourages faith’s expression in the vernacular. It honors diversity in unity. It allows the Holy Spirit to move and be felt among us without the hindrance of our preconceptions. Mission becomes no longer the denomination’s mission or even the church’s mission, but God’s mission in the world. The Commission calls on all Episcopal mission groups to undertake intentional group reflection on the impact their work has on inter-religious relationships in the geographical areas they serve. We call on mission groups to develop links with other churches and mission agencies in the geographic areas they serve and, where possible, develop links with work done by other religious groups and by secular groups. 6. Companion Dioceses to Broaden Our Relationships

The companion diocese relationships so common throughout the Anglican Communion constitute one of the most important mission movements of our time. Spurred by the Partnership in Mission paradigm initiated by the Anglican Consultative Council in 1973, the movement stimulated the global imagination of dioceses and empowered them to engage directly in mission in other parts of the world. This constituted a major departure from mission engagement directed primarily by voluntary mission societies and central church structures.

Quite suddenly, bishops, dioceses and the people of their parishes found that their discipleship had a global horizon. They realized the global dimension could be explored practically and immediately through visits, telephone calls, meetings to plan projects, sharing resources, receiving visitors, sending missionaries, and the like. International mission was transformed from the exotic adventure of a few to the shared enterprise of many. The diocese received new dignity and potency as a unit of Anglican structure. Inter-Anglican relationships were deepened profoundly as bishops and commissions experienced multiple individual, parish and diocesan encounters shaping their mutual understandings. Today, most Episcopal dioceses have companion relationships with dioceses in other parts of the world. A similar movement has occurred among Lutherans, so that many ELCA synods in the USA have companion synods abroad.

The Companion Diocese Network in the Episcopal Church has for many years

fostered new relationships and provided important consultation to diocesan companions. As diocesan companionships expose many anew to the world church, sometimes

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relationships are hampered by the inexperience of their participants in, for instance, cross-cultural encounter and funding decisions.

The Commission encourages the Companion Diocese Network to increase the

profile of companion relationships throughout our church. We further recommend that the church’s mission education effort include specific orientation for leaders of companion diocese relationships. 7. Financial Grants to Catalyze Gift Exchange Mutuality in mission between northern and southern Christians must overcome a chasm of wealth and opportunity. The disparity between rich and poor continues to grow, largely along national borders and by inexorable market rules that by now seem almost “natural”. Many of the poor in the Global South now despair of any systemic redress for endemic poverty.

Anglicans have responded with prophetic calls for Jubilee justice that would cancel debts and apportion land and other resources to the poor. Many individuals, parishes, dioceses and granting agencies offer programmatic giving in companionships within and beyond the Anglican Communion. Direct financial granting has long been integral in the church’s mission through the United Thank Offering of the Episcopal Church Women, beginning in the 19th century. In the latter half of the 20th century, the Presiding Bishop’s Fund for World Relief, now Episcopal Relief and Development, and the Grants Program of Trinity Church, New York City, emerged as major granting agencies. A number of parishes and dioceses now have large grants programs. Such agencies should be consulted by mission-minded Episcopalians who are new to grant-making.

Financial giving expresses faithful stewardship. Yet money in mission often

raises tensions between desiring to give and wanting to promote autonomy, between needing to receive and wanting to avoid dependency, between doing justice and encouraging self-sufficiency, between offering freely and requiring accountability. These tensions reflect spiritual and theological ambivalence about wealth and poverty in the life of the church, and highlight the injury that unjust disparity does to the body of Christ.

As a financial transfer from the relatively wealthy to the relatively poor, granting is a unique missiological situation. Granting should bear the marks of all authentic mission. Among many principles for granting, three deserve special attention: gift-exchange, human dignity, and accountability.

Granting is always the giving of a gift, and like any good gift, it best takes place within a relationship of exchange. Accordingly, it invites creative return. Rather than unilateral “donation”, granting is most luminously Christian when the granting body makes space for the possibility of gifts of gratitude in return.

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Granting must respect and build up human dignity in authentic relationships. Grants should occur within vibrant ecclesial or personal relationships and should not be made in a “Lone Ranger” fashion. A particular challenge today is the conjunction of issues of race and power with the granting of money, about which the Standing Commission on World Mission held a consultation in 2001. When receiving needed funds, people in the Global South often experience the granting process as eroding their dignity and compromising the integrity of their communities. When making grants, Christians in the Global North sometimes feel their motives and tone are misunderstood and are puzzled when conflict arises.

In an environment of economic globalization, granting organizations must develop sensitivity to the dynamics of power and race that condition financial transactions between north and south. Grants should not create dependency, perpetuate degrading conditions, or encourage inauthentic human activity. To avoid computer colonialism, application and reporting forms should be appropriate to the contexts where they are filled out. Developed through mutual discernment of God’s mission, grants should build up specifically Christian practices. They should increase the capacity of individuals and communities to address the development issues they identify, and in ways they agree respect both society and ecology. Grants should build self-reliance, which, in turn, nourishes authentic companionship in mission.

While grants should follow the agenda of the receiving community, granting as

mission activity always carries with it responsibility for accountability. As we see from the eucharistic gifts in our liturgy, giving intrinsically includes an aspect of accountability: the presence of the giver with an active recipient. In receiving the eucharist the worshiper becomes responsive to the self-donation of God. Our grant awarding and winning should similarly model the responsibility of both giver and recipient for each other, requiring the presence of the giver with her gift, and the responsibility of the recipient to care for the vulnerability of the giver.

Requiring accountability from grant recipients ensures the efficiency of financial

productivity, respects the stewardship of donors, nurtures sustainable fundraising, and builds up stewardship practices in recipient communities. As some recent events in Episcopal granting demonstrate, failing to require accountability facilitates misappropriation that deprives the poor in recipient communities of the assistance they need and damages the case for mission stewardship in our church. Far from expressing a generous spirit toward our mission companions, failing to require of them the accountability we require of ourselves expresses precisely the condescending paternalism that looser standards purport to mitigate. Accountability completes the circle of mutuality in mission, for it offers recipients the opportunity to offer the story of what money has done as a gift to the donor. Recipient communities also can hold granting bodies accountable to the way they present to donors both their work and the communities to which they give.

The Commission calls on the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission to convene a consultation to develop guidelines for the giving and receiving of grants in

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world mission. Participating in and benefiting from such a consultation would be granting agencies, parishes, dioceses, networks, and international companions. 8. Episcopal and Anglican Networks to Nourish Collaboration

One of the most striking developments in Episcopal world mission since 1975 has been the emergence of networks for global mission in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. As a newly prominent feature of Episcopal and Anglican life, networks are geographically dispersed communities of individuals or organizations that share information and collaborate in action through relationships of equality on a voluntary basis. While cooperating with centralized and hierarchical church structures, networks seek specifically to be de-centralized and non-hierarchical. They depart from the corporate church model that dominated the Episcopal Church in the 20th century. World mission groups are developing the model in ways that can be helpful throughout our church and the communion.

Episcopal world mission networks developed out of the diversification of mission

activity that followed the 1970s decline in the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society’s investment in sending missionaries. Numerous voluntary societies formed to re-vitalize the church’s mission work, among them: the Episcopal Church Missionary Community in 1974; the South American Missionary Society in 1976; Episcopal World Mission in 1982; Sharing of Ministries Abroad in 1985; and Anglican Frontier Missions in 1994. Diocesan and parish world mission flourished, largely through the formation of companion diocese relationships around the world.

The founding of the Episcopal Council for Global Mission in 1990 brought

diverse educational, sending, receiving, and funding organizations into a network for mutual consultation and action. The 2000 General Convention endorsed the council’s shift into becoming the Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission (EPGM), which formally relates to convention through Executive Council. The potential for conflicting duplication among the now over fifty mission organizations and networks has been averted through this network.

EPGM’s benefits, however, go far beyond conflict reduction. Initially the

network was a way of coping with what seemed the new and unfamiliar fact of mission diversification. It is now clear that diverse organizations at all levels of the church increase mission exponentially by exposing more church constituencies to mission possibility. The efforts of each organization are enhanced through the collaboration of the network. The network held a consultation on under-evangelized peoples in 1990, a Panama mission exposure in 1995, and a consultation on persecuted Christians in 1998. Standards for missionary-sending, probably the most comprehensive in the Anglican Communion, were completed in 2002 and provide the basis for peer review among member organizations and for Executive Council’s endorsement of missionaries sent by EPGM members.

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The Global Episcopal Mission (GEM) Network, established in 1994 in response to a crisis in General Convention’s anticipated funding of world mission, is an active community among well over fifty dioceses. Through its diocesan endorsements it maintains a close relationship with central church structures, but the member dioceses function as a network with each other. GEM’s 2002 annual meeting focused on the theme, especially important after the events of 11 September 2001, of justice in world mission.

Other networks strengthen specific areas of the church’s mission work. The

Seminary Consultation on Mission (SCOM) strengthens educational resources for international mission in the eleven accredited Episcopal seminaries. The Companion Diocese Network (CDN), as already discussed, has greatly helped the many companionships that Episcopal dioceses have entered abroad. The Haiti Connection brings together for consultation the many parishes, dioceses and other organizations with mission work in Haiti and offers a model for networks based on specific regions or types of work. Groups such as GEM, SCOM and CDN are members of EPGM, the network of networks.

The internal Provinces I through IX of the Episcopal Church present a special

opportunity for networking for world mission among the dioceses of particular regions. As a larger world mission outreach requires additional staff, such staff can be deployed in the church’s provinces, rather than at the Episcopal Church Center, using the facilities of dioceses, cathedrals, seminaries, parishes, and voluntary mission agencies. Such institutions and the provinces could partner to help support the additional staff. In this way, the enhanced world mission initiative that the Commission envisions would be achieved not through greater centralization at the Church Center but through geographical, institutional and financial networking. Such decentralized deployment has been fruitful in the Reformed Church of America, one of our ecumenical companions.

Networks have emerged in the Anglican Communion, as well. The Inter-

Anglican Standing Commission on Mission and Evangelism functions as an important network for mission activists throughout the communion. Like its predecessor, the Mission Commission of the Anglican Communion, or Missio, it is highlighting important concerns for all of us, currently the poverty crisis and the AIDS crisis. The Conference of Anglican Mission Organizations, held in Cyprus in February 2003, achieved important networking among mission groups. In 2001, the formation of the International Fellowship of Parish-Based Missiologists networked a remarkable group of mission activists who had not previously been in touch with one another.

The Commission proposes that the General Convention’s funding for the

Episcopal Partnership for Global Mission receive a modest increase to strengthen the network. We further propose that the church’s internal provinces be used as a network through which world mission can be catalyzed throughout the church. On this model, some existing and additional Episcopal Church Center staff in world mission would work in provincial settings instead of or in addition to working at the Episcopal Church Center.

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V. RESOURCES FOR WORLD MISSION: EQUIPPING THE CHURCH FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

1. A Plan to Re-Deploy the Church’s World Mission Funds

God’s call to mission and the crises of the contemporary world mean that faithful

gospel discipleship on the part of Episcopalians in the 21st century must include engagement with the wider world. Episcopalians need a vision for participating in God’s reconciling mission in the world. In this statement the Standing Commission on World Mission is attempting to offer such a vision. It will be incarnated as the breadth of our church experiences cross-cultural encounters around the world, principally in the Anglican Communion but also beyond. Experiencing Christianity in the Global South and reaching out to the under-evangelized are particular opportunities within the wider context.

For the overall mission of the church to benefit more fully from its world mission the Commission proposes that the church’s global outreach be enhanced through: energetic development of mission education; an increase in the number of missionaries sent and received, including a larger Young Adult Service Corps (YASC) and more minority missionaries; an increase in seminarian internships; better-prepared short-term mission pilgrimages; and expanded mission networking.

Our proposal relates integrally to the five budget priorities of Executive Council

as set forth by its Standing Committee on Administration and Finance for the 2004-06 triennium: • Partnerships with provinces will be enhanced through the incarnational presence of mission companions, both those sent and those received by ECUSA. • Youth and young adult ministry will be enhanced through expanding the Young Adult Service Corps, which plays a major role in nurturing future church leaders. • Proclamation of the gospel will be enhanced through all world mission activities, especially in increased attention to reaching the under-evangelized. • Revitalization and transformation of congregations will be catalyzed through discerning and engaging with God’s call to mission in the wider world. • Diversity, justice, and reaching out to the marginalized will be enhanced through a focus on poverty, AIDS, violence, minorities, and reconciliation.

Greater allocations within the program budget of General Convention will be necessary to implement this plan. The Commission proposes that such allocations be funded from the resources that are being released, beginning in the 1990s, as the Episcopal Church’s financial obligations decrease incrementally to former Episcopal jurisdictions that are now autonomous Anglican provinces. Our covenanted funding assistance to the Episcopal Church in the Philippines runs from 1992 to 2007; to La Iglésia Anglicana de México, from 1995 to 2020; and to Iglésia Anglicana de la Région Centrale de America, from 1998 to 2038. (Assistance to the Diocese of Liberia, now in the Province of West Africa, continues at a steady level on account of the devastation of continuing conflict in that country.)

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As financial subsidies decrease over time according to covenanted schedules, the

question arises, How should the newly available funds be used? The Commission recommends that these funds continue to be used in the church’s global engagement. Using them to support specific world mission initiatives will continue the Episcopal Church’s historic commitment to the wider world. The proposed re-allocation is more in keeping with companionship and mutuality in mission than generalized subsidies have proved to be. Simply re-absorbing the funds into the general and undifferentiated revenues of the church — as has been the practice from the inauguration of the covenants — impairs our church’s global vision of God and diminishes our church’s global discipleship.

How much money is involved? During the 2001-03 triennium, $7,265,000 was

devoted to the covenants with Central America ($3,086,000), Liberia ($705,000), Mexico ($2,141,000), and the Philippines ($1,333,000). Since 1992, when the first covenant was activated (with the Philippines), ECUSA’s covenanted financial obligations decreased by $99,443 in the 1992-94 triennium; $124,439 in the 1995-97 triennium; $724,179 in the 1998-2000 triennium; and $1,190,512 in the 2001-03 triennium. Thus a total of $2,138,573 became available from the world mission area during those 12 years and was simply reabsorbed into the general budget of the church. Covenants vary in their specificity, so it is difficult to project the funds that will become available between 2003 and 2020, but they will be substantial.

The Commission proposes that the 2003 General Convention adopt the principle

that world mission funds historically committed to the church’s global engagement through financial covenants to former international jurisdictions of the church be re-deployed in other areas of the church’s global engagement, and especially to world mission, as such funds become available through incrementally diminishing levels of support to the autonomous jurisdictions.

2. Specific Initiatives to Implement Companions in Transformation The initiatives detailed below reflect the kinds of commitments the Commission believes are necessary to implement the vision of Companions in Transformation. These proposed initiatives emerge out of a process of wide consultation, both within the Episcopal Church and with international companions. As strong as they may seem in moving beyond our current commitments, they are considerably more modest than initiatives that many of our companions have suggested. As the church undertakes the three-year consideration suggested in the last section of this report, it will be helpful to have such specific initiatives to stimulate reflection, discussion and planning. Specifically, the Standing Commission on World Mission proposes: A. Enhanced Mission Education

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All members of the Episcopal Church are by definition missionaries, and all are members of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Not all parishioners are able to participate directly in a cross-boundary mission experience, even a short-term one, but all can benefit through the experiences of others and through better mission education in their parishes and dioceses. A major enterprise of mission education will help Episcopalians connect their baptismal covenant with God’s call to global discipleship in the 21st century. Mission education is an urgent need for children, youth and adult members in parish life, and for church leaders. The Commission recommends that an additional AGR staff person be engaged to develop mission curricula for use in the dioceses and parishes. Such a staff person would be deployed in one of the church’s internal provinces.

B. Increased Number and Diversity of Missionaries

The Young Adult Service Corps (YASC), a new program, had eight participants per year in the 2001-03 pilot triennium, with minimal advertising and recruiting. This number could easily grow to 40 by 2006. The approximately 100 current DFMS missionaries fill only 30% of requests for missionaries. This number can and should increase. We propose a goal of at least 220 DFMS-appointed missionaries and 110 YASC missionaries by 2010. This would represent 1 YASC missionary and 2 other DFMS missionaries per ECUSA diocese. Of these, we look forward to: • 10% being missionaries received from other parts of the world by ECUSA dioceses; • 10% representing personnel from other parts of the world who serve in yet different parts or the world (so called South-to-South appointments); and • at least 10% of missionaries from the Episcopal Church coming from racial and ethnic minorities. By 2020, we envisage at least 300 DFMS-appointed missionaries of all categories and 200 YASC missionaries. Of these, 20% would be missionaries received from other parts of the world, 20% South-to-South, and 20% from racial and ethnic minorities. We have tied these ECUSA figures to all the dioceses, to emphasize the importance of engaging the international dioceses of our church (such as Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Taiwan and others) in the world mission of ECUSA. The international Episcopal dioceses provide important cross-boundary mission opportunities within ECUSA, and they should be involved in the church’s world-wide mission presence. We anticipate that the numbers of missionaries sent by the voluntary societies will also increase, keeping pace with the numbers of DFMS missionaries. At present they total 100. We encourage the voluntary societies to be sending 300 by 2010 and 500 by 2020.

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Financial constraints prevent large increases during the 2004-06 triennium. A possible trajectory of increases for various years is given in the table below:

Year DFMS

Various DFMS YASC

Voluntary Societies

Present 100 8 100 2004 110 12 120 2005 120 18 140 2006 (GC) 130 25 165 2007 145 40 190 2008 165 60 225 2009 (GC) 185 85 260 2010 220 110 300

2020 300 200 500

Greater numbers of DFMS missionaries will require a proportional increase in budget allocation. Several funding realities should be borne in mind: •Episcopal missionaries live close to the economic level of indigenous colleagues in their places of service and thus differ from the missionaries of some other churches. • Funding for DFMS missionaries is diverse, for no missionary is fully funded by DFMS. Each missionary usually is assisted by parish and diocesan contributions, and most missionaries now conduct fund-raising. DFMS funding is used effectively as a catalyst for funding-raising from other sources. • Centralized funding of DFMS missionaries therefore is a fraction of the central funding of missionaries of ecumenical companions such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Presbyterian Church USA. The Commission proposes that in the 2007-09 triennium $1,000,000 be allocated for YASC and $4,000,000 for other DFMS missionaries. Thus we propose a triennium budget for missionaries of at least $5,000,000. This would represent an aggregate increase of $1,750,000 over the current $3,250,000. (The 2001-03 budget provided $250,000 for YASC and $3 million for other DFMS missionaries.) In order to administer and support this growth in missionaries, the Commission proposes that Mission Personnel Office staffing increase from the current 1 program staff and 3 support staff to 2 program and 5 support staff by 2009, and 3 program and 7 support staff by 2012. Assignment of staff to the Young Adult Service Corps must be a high priority. As with other staff increases, we propose that additional staff be deployed in the provinces to extend the mission networking, with the possibility of shared support with the provinces and other local institutions to be explored.

C. Increased Recruitment of Minorities

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In recognition that racial and ethnic minorities are under-represented in worldwide mission programs, the Mission Exposure Program was established to stimulate interest in world mission among minorities. This program is currently held once per triennium. We recommend that this program be organized twice per triennium to help meet the goal of 20% minorities among all missionaries. The Commission proposes that the budget for the Mission Exposure Program be increased from $75,000 to $150,000.

D. Support for Short-Term Mission Pilgrimages Dioceses and parishes increasingly are carrying out short-term missions to other parts of the world. Preparation for such missions varies enormously, with repercussions on their effectiveness for the renewal and transformation expected by participants and by the sending and hosting dioceses. EPGM plans to develop standards for short-term missions. There is urgent need for curricula, training, networking and support for such pilgrimages to fulfill their potential. The Commission proposes that an additional Anglican and Global Relations staff person be engaged to provide short-term mission pilgrimage support. Such a staff person would be deployed in one of the church’s internal provinces, with the possibility of shared support with the province to be explored.

E. Increased Support for Cross-Cultural Formation through Seminaries All seminarians should have a cross-cultural mission experience in their formation, and past General Convention resolutions have supported this concept. With the $60,000 income from its $1.2 million endowment established by Venture in Mission, the Seminary Consultation on Mission (SCOM) is able to provide internships to about 20 students and faculty per year. Thus this opportunity is available to only about 5% of seminarians annually, and to just half of the approximately 40 seminarians who apply each year. The General Convention should match SCOM’s budget. Students from seminaries in the church’s international dioceses should be included in this opportunity. The Commission proposes that at least $60,000 be allocated to SCOM on an annual basis, to enable 40 seminarians to participate in cross-cultural internships annually.

F. Strengthened Mission Networking The success of EPGM in bringing together the many Episcopal entities involved in world mission and the energy and dynamism resulting from this collaboration is testimony to the effectiveness of networking. While the contribution from DFMS should not become preponderant, it should be increased to enable EPGM to fulfill its potential. We propose that the General Convention’s allocation for EPGM be increased from $25,000 to $40,000 per year.

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G. Summary

We believe such growth in the world mission of the Episcopal Church in education, missionary sending and receiving, leadership nurture, and networking is both appropriate and realistic:

• Increasingly, the Episcopal Church has centered its catechesis and mission vision in the Baptismal Covenant, but the global dimensions of that covenant have received less attention. Enhancing our mission education to include the whole earth community is essential in the 21st century. • Global interdependence in the Anglican Communion calls for a major investment in the committed personal presence that missionaries bring, whether those are missionaries who come to us, South-to-South missionaries whom we support, or Episcopal missionaries abroad. • Resurgence of mission interest throughout our church calls us to set goals that communicate the church’s commitment to provide channels for the growing numbers of people offering themselves for mission service. The Young Adult Service Corps is a potent example, where General Convention 2000’s provision of a new avenue of service for young people prompted an immediate stream of volunteers. • Specific goals for missionaries to ECUSA, South-to-South missionaries, minority missionaries, and young missionaries respond to long recognized needs and desires that world mission be an initiative of the whole church in the whole world. Such goals exist in mutuality with growth goals embraced the church’s voluntary societies. Additional staff will be deployed in the provinces rather than at the Episcopal Church Center. Thus these goals do not represent greater centralization of the church’s mission work. • The 20/20 Vision affirmed by the 2000 General Convention, which calls for doubling the Episcopal Church’s weekly attendance by the year 2020, will catalyze mission vision in local communities that, in turn, will stimulate interest in world mission. Conversely, participating in God’s mission in the wider world catalyzes the vitality and growth of congregations. 3. A Plan to Study and Prepare to Implement the Vision in 2006 Companions in Transformation: The Episcopal Church’s World Mission in a New Century offers a wide-ranging vision and makes major proposals in the church’s life. The Commission initially envisioned implementation commencing during the 2004-06 triennium. We realize now that the scope of our proposal requires a triennium of study so that church members can explore and appropriate the mission understandings that the statement sets forth. The church also needs time to consider the statement’s deployment and financial proposals, develop consensus, and plan for the implementation of these or other proposals.

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A massive slow-down in the economy of the USA and the world has had a major impact on the financial resources of the Episcopal Church since 2000. The church’s income from investments has declined dramatically, as has the income of parishes and dioceses. In this environment, the additional financial commitments our proposal requires cannot realistically be implemented during the 2004-06 triennium. This is a supporting reason for our call for a triennium of study and planning. The Commission proposes that the 2003 General Convention call the church to study the proposals and plan for their implementation during the 2004-06 triennium. Such study and planning would be undertaken by parishes, dioceses, voluntary mission agencies, seminaries, mission networks, and Episcopal Church Center agencies. The Standing Commission on World Mission would be charged with gathering and interpreting responses from around the church and making specific programmatic and budgetary proposals to the 2006 General Convention.

A DOXOLOGY Embracing the ethos of world mission set forth in this vision and implementing its proposals will require a cultural shift in the Episcopal Church.

Where we have been paralyzed by guilt, we give ourselves to be transformed by repentance. Where we feared that cross-cultural encounters must entail cultural violence, we offer ourselves to be transfigured through walking with Christians in diverse settings. Where we trusted that our understandings are sufficient, we anticipate that international companions will energize our pilgrimage from new starting places. Where we hesitated to share Christ’s gospel, we know ourselves called into religious encounters where witness and dialogue are inseparable. Where we depended on grants and programs, we feel the Holy Spirit nurturing relationships with persons and groups, and there we find Christ luminously present. Where we once suspected that the gospel is marginal to the world’s real challenges, we see that Christian presence and prophecy are vital to healing in the world’s crises. Where we thought that integrity calls us out of mission, we hear God is calling us into mission and realize that mission engagement is vital to Christian integrity. With the writer to the Ephesians we exclaim: “Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine! Glory to God from generation to generation in the church, and in Christ Jesus forever and ever!”

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Standing Commission on World Misson An Interim Body of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church The canons define the tasks of the commission as follows: “It shall be the duty of the Commission, as to all mission outside the United States, to review and evaluate existing policies, priorities and strategies, and to promote partnership for global mission among the various groups within the church, to plan and propose policy on overseas mission, and to make recommendations pertaining to the Executive Council and the General Convention” [Canon I.1.2(n)(9)]. Members are appointed for six-year terms, the laypersons and clergy by the President of the House of Deputies, the bishops by the Presiding Bishop. By canon, the twelve members must include six laypersons, three priests or deacons, and three bishops. At the end of each triennium, half the members rotate off the commission; the dates below are such retirement years. The Companions in Transformation document was developed during the 2001-2003 triennium. The Vision Statement Committee of the commission consisted of Willis Jenkins, Helena Mbele-Mbong and Titus Presler. Ms. Nancy W. Broadwell (East Carolina) 2003, treasurer and secretary

Mr. Dennis G. Case (Southwestern Virginia) 2003

The Rev. Canon Kathleen J. Cullinane (Indianapolis) 2003, vice-chair

Ms. Diana Dillenberger-Frade (Southeast Florida) 2006

The Rt. Rev. James E. Folts (West Texas) 2006

Ms. Joan Hermon (Virgin Islands) 2003

Mr. Willis Jenkins (Oklahoma) 2006

The Rev. Dr. Harold Lewis (Pittsburgh) 2006

Ms. Helena Mbele-Mbong (Churches in Europe) 2006

The Very Rev. Dr. Titus Presler (Texas) 2003, chair

The Rt. Rev. Wilfrido Ramos-Orench (Connecticut) 2006

The Rt. Rev. William J. Skilton (South Carolina) 2003

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Further Reading on World Mission Anglican Consultative Council, The Anglican Cycle of Prayer. (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications): An annually published 52-week prayer cycle for dioceses and provinces of the Anglican Communion. Donovan, Mary Sudman, A Different Call: Women's Ministries in the Episcopal Church, 1850-1920 (Wilton, Ct.: Morehouse-Barlow, 1986): A history of women’s role in Episcopal mission work. Douglas, Ian T., Fling Out the Banner: The National Church Ideal and the Foreign Mission of the Episcopal Church (New York: Church Hymnal Corporation, 1996): A comprehensive history of Episcopal international mission. Douglas, Ian T., ed., Waging Reconciliation: God’s Mission in a Time of Globalization and Crisis (New York: Church Publishing, 2002): Presentations made to the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops in September 2001. Harris, Mark, The Challenge of Change: The Anglican Communion in the Post Modern Era (New York: Church Publishing, 1998): Authority and identity in the Anglican Communion in a new historical period. Jeganathan, W. S. Milton, ed., Mission Paradigm in the New Millennium (Delhi: Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for the Department of Mission and Evangelism of the Church of South India, 2000): Essays by Indian theologians and practitioners on diverse areas of Christian mission. Kew, Richard and Roger White, Toward 2015: A Church Odyssey, (Cambridge, Ma.: Cowley, 1997): Strategies for global mission from an Episcopal perspective. Missio (Mission Commission of the Anglican Communion), Anglicans in Mission: A Transforming Journey (London: SPCK, 2000): A major commission’s overview of mission perspectives and strategies for the Anglican Communion. Okorocha, Cyril C., ed., G-CODE 2000: The Cutting Edge of Mission (London: Anglican Communion Publications, 1996): Reports by world Anglicans at the mid-point review of the Decade of Evangelism. Presler, Titus L., Horizons of Mission, vol. 11 in “The New Church’s Teaching Series” (Cambridge, Ma.: Cowley, 2001): An overview of the history, theology and practice of Christian mission, enhanced with contemporary stories. Sachs, William L., The Transformation of Anglicanism: From State Church to Global Communion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1993): Changes in Anglicanism that led to the church’s growth beyond England.

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Schreiter, Robert J., ed., Mission in the Third Millennium (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001): Roman Catholic perspectives from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Stockdale, Sharon, ed., New Wineskins for Global Mission (Pasadena, Ca.: William Carey Press, 1996): Presentations from the largest mission conference held in the Episcopal Church. Turner, Philip, and Frank Sugeno, Crossroads are for Meeting: Essays on the Mission and Common Life of the Church in a Global Society (Sewanee: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/USA, 1986): Papers by world Anglicans at a pan-Anglican symposium on mission. Wheeler, Andrew, ed., Voices from Africa: Transforming Mission in a Context of Marginalization: An Anthology (London: Church House Publishing, 2002): Short vignettes from people in all walks of life, gathered around eight themes. Wingate, Andrew, Kevin Ward, Carrie Pemberton, and Wilson Sitshebo, eds. Anglicanism: A Global Communion (New York: Church Publishing, 1998): Essays by world Anglicans on Anglican identity among diverse faiths and cultures.

1 The Overseas Review Committee in The Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in United States of America, otherwise known at the Episcopal Church: Held in Louisville, Kentucky from September Thirtieth to October Eleventh, inclusive, in the Year of Our Lord 1973 ([New York:] Seabury Press, [1974], p. 682. 2 Standing Commission on World Mission, Mission in Global Perspective (Cincinnati: Forward Movement Publications, 1982), pp. 24-25. 4 The Overseas Review Committee, p. 692. 5 John Clarke and Eleanor Johnson, eds., Anglicans in Mission: A Transforming Journey (London and Ottawa: SPCK, 2000).

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6 Division for Global Mission, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Global Mission in the Twenty-first Century: A Vision of Evangelical Faithfulness in God’s Mission (Chicago: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, [1999]. 7 Frederick R. Wilson, ed., The San Antonio Report: Your Will be Done: Mission in Christ’s Way [Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, World Council of Churches] (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), 32. 8 “On Waging Reconciliation”, statement by the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, 26 September 2002, in Waging Reconciliation: God’s Mission in a Time of Globalization and Crisis, edited by Ian T. Douglas (New York: Church Publishing: 2002), xi.